CogSearch

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence In Everyday Lives of Consumers

Artificial intelligence might conjure images of a robotic Haley Joel Osment in Spielberg's film AI, or it may make you think of Data from Star Trek. Yet the impact of artificial intelligence in everyday life is more understated and far-reaching than science fiction might suggest.

Artificial intelligence has the potential to offer $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. You already encounter it every day. Think of all those times Amazon recommended a book to you or Netflix suggested a film or TV show. Those recommendations are based on algorithms that examine what you've bought or watched. The algorithms learn from those purchases, using them to suggest other things you might enjoy. Artificial intelligence lies behind those algorithms.

Simple artificial intelligence even filters your incoming emails, diverting spam away from your inbox. It works better than software rules because it learns what could be spam based on the content of the email. The artificial intelligence even builds a model based on your preferences -- what is spam to you may not be spam to another user.

Artificial intelligence goes so much further than recommending a book or filtering your emails. Let's take a look at the other ways we can measure the impact of artificial intelligence in everyday life.

Artificial Intelligence Powers Your Virtual Assistants

How often do you ask Siri or Cortana a question? Do you order an Uber through Alexa or plan appointments using the Google Assistant? Each time, you're interacting with artificial intelligence.

These voice assistants find the information and return the answers to your device, or they control other apps to achieve the desired result. While Alexa can't yet anticipate what you might ask for, Microsoft predicts that Cortana will be able to predict your needs. It'll do so by learning from the information it gathers and from the way you use it.

Financial Companies Use Artificial Intelligence To Monitor For Fraud

Consider how many people have a bank account. Now, on top of that, consider the number of credit cards that are in circulation. How many man hours would it take for employees to sift through the thousands of transactions that take place every day? By the time they noticed an anomaly, your bank account could be empty or your credit card maxed out.

Financial companies often use artificial intelligence to monitor transaction requests since algorithms process information so quickly. They spot patterns in your transactions and alert users to suspicious activity.

They can check that the purchase was yours before they process the payment. It may seem inconvenient if it was you trying to book those exhibition tickets, but it could save you thousands of dollars in the long term.

Self-Driving Cars Could Use Artificial Intelligence To Learn To Drive

How did you learn to drive your car? Through practice and experience. In all likelihood, self-driving cars will be no different. Using machine learning to let the cars learn how to behave on the road means they're more likely to integrate with user-operated cars.

In reported incidents so far, drivers have collided with self-driving cars because the autonomous cars stuck so rigidly to the rules of the road. Artificial intelligence could elevate them beyond simple programming to better evaluate the situation on the road in real time. They'll be able to apply what they've learned in previous situations to make better decisions.

In fact, an average Boeing 777 pilot spends just seven minutesmanually piloting the plane. An Airbus plane pilot manages half of that. The airplanes use a combination of motion sensors and GPS to track their position in flight. The software can even land commercial aircraft, though much of those seven minutes is spent on takeoff and landing.

This is the best use of the technology, where the impact of artificial intelligence in everyday life is barely felt.

The Impact Of Artificial Intelligence In Everyday Life Will Be Felt In Smart Homes

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become one of the biggest technological shifts in recent years. Gartner predicts that 20.4 billion "things" will be connected by 2020. IoT technology requires the use of sensors, all of which collect vast quantities of data. Unfortunately, there's too much data to be successfully analyzed by human operators.

Instead, artificial intelligence can sift through this store of data to help make our lives easier. Imagine your digital assistant plugging into the smart city to direct your car to the nearest free parking space. Or your smart refrigerator ordering new supplies when your food stocks run low. Google Maps already sources location data from your smartphone. By comparing the location of a device from one point in time to another, it can determine how fast the device is traveling. Put simply, it can determine how slow the traffic is in real time. It can combine that data with incidents reported by users to build a picture of the traffic at any given moment. Maps can recommend the fastest route for you based on traffic jams, construction work or accidents between you and your destination.

It also means researchers can make more accurate predictions during pilot projects due to their access to big data. Their conclusions will be more applicable than experiments run using sample data sets. The use of neural network architecture means artificial intelligence can improve translation software for better accuracy in understanding other languages. None of these advances are possible without artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence Is Already Here

From aircraft autopilot to banking institutions, the heavy hitters already use artificial intelligence. You benefit from its use every time you log into Amazon or Netflix.